Users of social networking services may form connections, associations, or other relationships with other users based on real-life interactions, online interactions, or a wide variety of other bases. For example, users may choose to connect with others who are in the same geographic location, who have a common circle of friends, who have attended the same college or university, etc. Social networking systems value user connections because better-connected users tend to increase their use of the social networking system, thus increasing user-engagement and corresponding increase in, for example, advertising opportunities. Accordingly, it is generally desirable that users have opportunities to increase the strength and numbers of their connections within the social networking system.
Without doing a specific search for a user, it is a common challenge for users to locate other users with whom they may wish to form a connection. Existing social networking systems provide limited mechanisms for finding such connections. In some instances, for example, social networking systems provide individuals with access to an introduction mechanism. The introduction mechanism may be as simple as showing the profiles of matched individuals through listings or social network visualizations, or through context-aware match alerts and introduction management tools that aim to encourage interpersonal contact. Examples of social matching applications include a commercially available system that matches users based on location and also looks for mutual acquaintances for introduction and another commercially available system that uses social-tie data to recommend people to each other.